THE MONEY MASTERS

BASEL I. In 1988 a faceless, un-elected group of bankers met in Basel, Switzerland at the Bank for International Settlements (“BIS”) – the “Central Banker’s bank” which even Swiss authorities may not enter – and in their “Basel I accords” agreed to a set of minimum capital requirements (8%) for banks. This was a number fine for some banks, but higher than what was in place for France and especially Japanese banks. To raise more capital to reach the 8% level, French and Japanese banks had to reduce loans, causing a recession in France and a depression in Japan, one from which Japan has never fully recovered.

BASEL II. In 2004, the same group met and agreed to Basel II (“The Return of Basel I”)– which required banks to value their capital based on market values, or “mark-to-the-market.” These rules were approved for the US on November 1, 2007. The declining housing market set off a chain reaction due in part to Basel II which banks knew was coming and constricted credit in anticipation of. The next month, December, 2007 the stock market collapsed and the Great Recession began in earnest. This should have been no surprise to the Japanese, nor to the BIS bankers. Full implementation of Basel II was subsequently delayed in the US until 2009. Basel II has been blamed for actually increasing the effect of the housing crisis as banks had to reduce lending to increase their capital as the value of mortgages they hold declined. This produced a downhill snowball effect on home prices and then on nearly everything else as lending and the economy contracted.

BASEL III. Not content with two massive regulatory failures, the same bankers have now produced Basel III (“The Revenge of Basel I & II”). Like Basel I & II, Basel III increases capital requirements yet again, in a series of steps beginning in 2013 with the start of the gradual phasing-in of the higher minimum capital requirements not completed until 2018. The BIS bankers have imposed this and are forcing their home governments to get in line, as has the UK, the US and most other developed nations. It is truly a global rule by central bankers acting in concert/cabal.
An OECD study estimates that the medium-term harmful impact of Basel III implementation on GDP growth is in the range of −0.05% to −0.15% per year – just what’s needed in a worldwide recession! To meet the capital requirements effective in 2015 banks are estimated to need to increase their lending spreads on average by about .15%. The capital requirements effective as of 2019 could increase bank lending spreads by about .5%. Rising interest rates could significantly hurt small bank capital positions because a 3% upward swing in interest rates could drop a bank’s capital by 30%, placing the bank in an undercapitalized position, forcing it dramatically to reduce loans. Again, the downhill snowball effect.
The proposed Basel III regulatory capital requirements are an immense and unnecessary burden that will actually threaten the existence of banks with under $1billion in assets. These new regulations will further drive consolidation into a few bigger banks. Some on Wall Street, like mergers and acquisitions expert John Slater, predict that Basel III’s compliance costs will lead to a merger boom, and that in the next 3-5 years 20-30 percent of all banks will merge, further consolidating wealth in fewer and fewer hands. That is the object – world bank/economic and hence political control by a handful of un-elected, unaccountable, international bankers beholden to no one, many of whom have ethics only Machiavelli could admire and worldviews that most people on earth would consider abhorrent.

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